Thursday, September 18, 2014

THE BOUTOKM CHANNEL GOT TAKEN OFF OF YOUTUBE AND NOW I AM SAD.
WHERE ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO FIND MY ODOTTEMITA VIDEOS I AM SAD.
— Reginald Thunderdick (@The_Otaco) September 18, 2014

The last of the great Nico Douga Dance Cover reuploader channels has finally gone down. For good? Possibly. BoutoKM is only the last of a long line of great reuploader channels - starting with the now-defunct Bjorkit channel (it's still up, but there hasn't been a new video upload since the beginning of 2012), the loss of the Japanese-run AJUKII channel back in 2012, the trio of Treetopfan channels that all were eventually shut down, and then BoutoKM & his set of channels that all seem to be shut down now. You could add ffstip as well - his videos included dancers that were more obscure & he did something the other channels above didn't -- he asked for permission to reupload the videos from the dancers themselves. He hasn't updated since September of 2013.

This is going to be a extremely long post, so hit the jump to read more...=======================================

Nico Douga reuploaders on YouTube were the great double-edge sword -- not just for Dance Covers (Odottemita, or "Danced_It"), but Vocal Covers (Utattemita, or "Sang_It") as well. The popularity of many Japanese dancers to foreigners abroad can be attributed to these channels -- without these channels, it's likely dancers such as Miume, Melochin, Apricot*, K'suke, Ry☆, KamenLiar-217, Ririri, and many others wouldn't be as well known outside Japan. Sometimes their videos would go into the million view or higher range.

However, the views on this videos would take away views from the original videos from either on Nico Douga or on YouTube. This has certainly troubled some dancers as they have no control over which videos get reuploaded. Simply searching "BoutoKM" on twitter brings up this tweet from Apricot*:

Even with the terrible translation, it's apparent that some in the Odottemita community in Japan don't take kindly to reuploaders. Moreover, many of the dance videos on Nico Douga now come with a "No Reprint" disclaimer in their descriptions.

The end of the Dance Video Reuploaders is perhaps a good thing. This isn't the end of reuploading dance videos from Nico Douga, as there will always be those who will reupload their favorite videos from Nico Douga to YouTube and share that around to their friends.Yes, the overall popularity of many dancers will take a major hit with the loss of the major reuploader channels - but it opens up a opportunity for true fans of these dancers to really support them. You can start by doing one of the two below:

1) Get used to Nico Douga:Yes, I know Nico Douga is not exactly the most English-friendly website to use. They also require you to make a account on their site in order to view the videos. Making a account these days is relatively easy - so not making one is just silly. I know - you may hate Nico Douga because it doesn't allow for embedding on Twitter or Facebook. Their mobile site is absolutely atrocious to non-Japanese speakers because it's not even translated as of yet. The Nico Douga app on iTunes is only available in Japan. Searching for your favorite dancer can sometimes make things extremely difficult. With that said, it's still possible to view videos on Nico Douga, even on a mobile phone without the app. Here are some (hopefully) self-explanatory pictures off my mobile phone:

Hopefully Nico Douga starts supporting English more - after 2012 it has simply given up and went home leaving many English users high and dry.

2) Hope your favorite dancer has a YouTube channel and Subscribe to them:
Some dancers do have Official YouTube channels run by them (or a close friend). How often they are updated depends on the dancer in question. To get you started, here is a listing of channels I know of certain dancers:

Obviously not everyone has a YouTube channel - of particular note is that Melochin as of right now does not have a YouTube channel. If your favorite dancer is not listed above but has a YouTube channel (and you know they're the ones running it), don't be afraid to link them in the comments section of this blogpost and I'll try to update this post with any more that should be added.

Hopefully if there are more subscribers on their channels, it will convince them to upload videos that are usually only uploaded to Nico Douga to also upload them on YouTube. Though, sometimes YouTube with it's terrible DMCA policy may not allow them to do so.

Lastly, to end this blogpost - please don't be afraid to share this around the Odottemita watching community. Whether that is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Google+, Vimeo, Mixi, Ameblo, Line, Myspace, or whatever social media service you are using. The more fans that are able to do this - the less-likely that another reuploader the size of a BoutoKM or Treetopfan getting taken down by YouTube will not have a major impact to Odottemita lovers outside of Japan.

6 comments:

Well it's true that odottemita on NND don't like to see their videos re-uploaded on YT (it's somehow understandable ) but most of dancers I talk with didn't flag my videos, they first sent me a message saying that they wanted me to delete the video (which is clearly the best option). I think for BoutoKM and most of the other channel, what closed them are the copyrights. BoutoKM has sooo many videos so it wouldn't be surprising if he had at least 2 strikes, but idk. For Treetopfan, when we talk (he?) told me that most of the time his channel was close by copyrights and dancers, so that's how he could get back his channel. Personally my first channel was taken down only by copyrights. But I feel like, even if most of them on NND don't like re-uploads, only a few noticed it and do something about it. It'd be better if every dancer has his YT channel, but yeah even with that I'm not sure if they're going to mirror them..

I actually mirror the videos myself and keep them private... Unless you have a mirrored version (which I usually don't search for... I just download straight from NND and mirror it for myself and the dance group). Also yes Treetopfan is a male. Another reprinter said that someone emailed him asking him to take down Ririri's stuff.. For the most part it is the music, but I think mirrored dance videos are fine as long as you credit the dancer... MsMirrorDances doesn't say the dancer's name, provide the original link, or the choreographer's name. It irritates me a lot, esp since the comments are usually ignorant of NND and odottemita....